Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “Some jokes are less agreeable than others.” Harriet obviously was pickier about her jokes than we are.

Back in 2011 a group of researchers studied what makes a joke… a joke. According to Matt Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams (The book: Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse Engineer the Mind), laughing at a joke is part of our evolution as human beings.

Sometimes, we don’t really understand what’s going on and we make mistakes in comprehending the world around us. Jokes reward us for figuring out those mistakes. Once we understand our mistakes, we can laugh at them.

A joke invites you to come to the wrong conclusion, then chuckle when you realize what happened. So, despite Harriet’s opinion about less agreeable jokes, even bad jokes are good jokes if they make you laugh.

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with a bit of evolutionary theory. Enjoy these bad jokes – you’ll surely find them agreeable.